#1496: Master Kong Mianba Pork Ribs Flavor Instant Noodles

Here’s another one sent by a kind reader in Sweden! Thank you! Master Kong is really popular in China and what surprises me is that there are no places that I’ve seen that you can get their products here in the United States. Luckily, people send them to me from time to time, but it seems to me that I really need to figure out a way to contact them and do a Meet The Manufacturer with them. The Chinese consume billions of packages of instant noodles a year and I’ve never done a Chinese Meet The Manufacturer yet! It’s about time. Well, let’s check out these pork ribs Master Kong instant noodles!

Here’s the back of the package (click image to enlarge). Not sure if it contains meat. As preparation instructions aren’t included, I’m going with 500ml water for 3 minutes (cooking) and adding in vegetable sachet during cooking, then sachet contents at the end and stirring.

The noodle block.

Powder base.

A very light powder.

Paste base sachet.

Smells porky.

Vegetable sachet.

Looks like cabbage and other things.

Finished (click image to enlarge). Added pork, bean sprouts, sliced green onion and sweet onion. The noodles had a great thick gauge and were chewy (I can’t read Chinese, but there is a picture of potatoes on the back of the package which to me intimates that it’s a potato noodle). The broth has a good thickness. The flavor is a realistic pork flavor and the paste thickened it up surprisingly well. The vegetables hydrated quite well; cabbage crisp and (possibly) pork crunchies were good as well. 4.5 out of 5.0 stars. EAN bar code 6900873710560.

Hey Hans, take a little adventure trip to the Asian market and you will find an whole new kingdom of Southeast Asian and Chinese noodles (mentioned these two coz they are my favs) :)) What’s fun is the flavoring of Chinese noodles (e.g. spiciness) could change dramatically when you move across from the southern regions to the northern regions. In the southern and southern-west areas esp, they have very different definitions of what constitutes as spice and equally different ways of creating it, and this culture echoes in their instant noodle products as well. Since you are a wonderful ramen taste artist (I love your reviews and take great pleasure in reading them before sleep or during suppers), I thought you might like to take note of this.

Oh I’ve frequented Asian grocery stores for a long long time! In fact, that’s probably one of my favorite things to do – my wife just asked what I wanted to do for my birthday and again this year, a trip to Canada to the Asian grocery stores up there is all I want to do. What’s more, when we were guests of MyKuali over in Malaysia, they took us to an Asian grocery where I got about 30 varieties that aren’t at all available here.

Master Kong is a tricky on to find here on this side of the USA – but they’re creeping in slowly. Sadly, the northern Chinese stuff (Baijia I believe) has found their way into my bottom ten list.